A push to place the Cootamundra District Hospital on the state heritage listing has been rejected.
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Betty Brown submitted the nomination in November 2015 after spending $600 to obtain copies of the building’s original plans.
Mrs Brown traveled to the state’s Office of Environment and Heritage to hand-deliver the paperwork.
She was told a decision could take up to six months but hadn’t heard anything for two years unless she contacted them.
Recently she received an undated letter advising her the nomination for the state heritage register had been rejected by the State Heritage Register Committee (SHRC).
“After consideration of the information provided in the nomination the SHRC resolved not to progress this nomination as it does not meet the threshold of heritage significance for the state of New South Wales,” the letter reads.
The hospital was built in 1907 and was designed by Cootamundra architect Ernest Reece Laver.
That letter says that “local [heritage] listing is the appropriate heritage listing for the old Cootamundra Hospital”.
Mrs Brown said she wanted to see the building preserved and to be used, “not just sitting there, rotting away”.
Mrs Brown said she had written to Member for Cootamundra Steph Cooke to seek her assistance to appeal the decision and find out why it was rejected.
“There’s nothing much left in our town for history,” she said.
“I’m happy to see it sold to another user, just not knocked down, the facade needs to be kept.”
Mrs Brown said she was passionate about keeping Cootamundra’s heritage.
“If we knock it down, you destroy your history and you’ve got nothing.”
The building was a full-time health facility until the early 1980s when a new hospital began operations, the services were amalgamated before the
Cootamundra Shire Council became trustees for the property in the mid-1990s and the building was used by a employment services provider, SkillShare.
While the main building is unused, Christine Wishart’s Dance Studio have been tenants in part of the facility for the the last 11 years.